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Gmail recently rolled out a change to its settings, where now you can permanently turn on SSL encryption. Do it now—your personal data will thank you for it. Besides, it’s going to get a lot easier to hack Gmail sessions very soon, because some guy is planning on releasing a hacking tool to the public in order to force Google to implement better security. [monkey_bites]
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Good news: Apple is extending MobileMe subscriptions by an additional 60 days to make up for the recent problems with the service. The extension applies to all subscribers with an active account as of August 19th. Apple granted a 30 day extension a few weeks ago.[InformationWeek]
There’s not a lot of contact info on the web for Greyhound or its executives, but one determined customer has put a lot of effort into documenting what there is. Here are mailing addresses and a few unpublished phone numbers for people in the Greyhound executive offices.
Pizza Hut apologized for sending an unsolicited marketing email by sending an unsolicited apology email. We’ve all accidentally hit send without ending the world, but the pizza-maker’s flub is all the more egregious because they force customer who place orders online to opt-in to spam marketing. According to Pizza Hut, the error occurred while “testing new functionality.”
At least Verizon is being honest about the fact that they’re not going to read your emails, right?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you responded to one of those Nigerian scam emails, offering fabulous riches for just a small amount of work? Here’s the story from an unsuspecting college student who totally fell for one. An impecunious immigrant to this country from rural China, he made the perfect target for “Dr. Mike Johnson.” The good doctor was looking to hire some employees. The job? Cashing Traveler’s Cheques and forwarding the money on to Nigeria… In other words, the job was to be a victim of check fraud. Here’s the story…
Meet Dr. Herman I. Libshitz, a retired radiologist and potential Verizon customer who would like DSL. Sadly, Dr. Libshitz was informed that he could not use his name in his email address or as his user name because it has “shit” in it.
jruggierio@register.com – John Ruggerio – VP Sales
If your email account is with Google or Yahoo, your days of seeing phishing emails from fake eBay or PayPal addresses should be over. Google announced last week that it’s now using DomainKeys to verify messages really do come from paypal.com or ebay.com—if they don’t, they never even make it to your In Box. This is possible because eBay and PayPal are now making sure “that all their email is signed with DomainKeys and DKIM.” Since Yahoo! also uses DomainKeys and DKIM (they developed it, in fact), phishing attacks for Yahoo! Mail accounts should also disappear.
Apparently Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, has never made a mistake and needed help (from, say, Bank of America,) because he thinks that homeowners who are desperately trying to refinance out of their disastrous home loans and avoid foreclosure are “disgusting” if they look to the internet for help writing letters.
Kevin Furlong is a season ticket holder with the Detroit Lions. As masochistic as that sounds, it seems that Kevin didn’t appreciate an email that the Lions inadvertently sent him concerning a problem with his tickets. The email read: “Lance…he is not talking about you here. Mark was asked to speak to these people and he said no. F… ’em until next year.”
Meet Doug Steenland, CEO of Northwest airlines. He and his fellow executives can help fix problems left unresolved by tree-bound call center sloths. Here’s how to reach Northwest’s executive management team…
Cole discovered that by simply incrementing a numerical string by one in a url Best Buy sent out, he could pull up screen after screen of random customer info. Fortunately, all he could see were customer names, their home addresses, and their order numbers. It’s still surprising that Best Buy—or more specifically, Postpublisher.net, the email company they outsourced this to—wasn’t more careful with customer security.
Condé Nast marketing department, are you on crack? Have you put some trinket from “The Hills” in charge of your mail server? Justin has emailed you repeatedly to tell you to stop spamming him. His marketing preferences on your site show a vast field of “No” for every single title on your list. And yet he’s received 16 emails since his last request—almost three a month. You should know better—or, as Justin puts it, “This isn’t some Nigerian guy trying to make my penis larger or send me money, this is a company here, in the United States, that I know should be held accountable.”
Update: Here’s a better list. One good thing about Matt’s troubles with his mom’s Qwest account is he was able to collect and test various email addresses for their executives. Here’s his list of the ones that work and the ones that don’t.
Internet service providers are actively tracking 100,000 users, reading every email they send and every website they visit, according to the Washington Post. The report coincides with a damning Associated Press investigation of ISP contracts which finds that they reserve broad rights to read essentially anything you view on the internet without any intervening supervision or regulation.
If you were one of the conventioneers who got charged extra fees by the Westin Casuarina, we suggest you talk to your credit card company or contact The Coaching Center (according to the Houston Chronicle, the company’s president is refunding the charges directly to those affected). If you need contact info for management at the hotel, however, an anonymous tipster sent in a list of phone numbers and email addresses.
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